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Ontario probing charges Jewish sect mistreated children

MONTREAL—The Ontario government says it is actively investigating allegations of child neglect and mistreatment related to a radical Jewish sect that recently fled child-welfare authorities in Quebec.

Child and Youth Services Minister Teresa Pirruzza’s office said in a statement to the Star Tuesday that children’s aid officials in Chatham-Kent and Windsor are involved in an “ongoing investigation” of the 40 families and approximately 130 children connected to the ultra-orthodox Lev Tahor community that made a midnight run across the Quebec-Ontario border earlier this month.

“At this time no children have been apprehended, and the families have provided access to protection workers for the ongoing investigation,” Pirruzza’s office said. “They will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that child safety remains a foremost priority.”

But amid allegations by Quebec children’s aid officials of poor nutrition, hygiene problems and shortcomings in the education of the sect’s children, Lev Tahor’s new hosts are vowing to take “all necessary action to address child safety.”

The response from the provincial government comes amid increased pressure for Ontario to take action against the radical and reclusive Jewish group that has been branded by detractors as a “cult.” Child-welfare officials in Quebec have offered any and all assistance in following up its three-month probe and there are even calls in Israel, where Lev Tahor was founded, to extract the children from their families and ensure their well-being.

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The 40-odd families that make up the community follow the extreme teachings of their spiritual leader Shlomo Helbrans, who was granted asylum in Canada in 2004 after claiming that his opposition to Israel as a Jewish state left him vulnerable to political persecution.

In the last week, since fleeing Quebec, Lev Tahor families have opened their doors to journalists and children’s aid investigators, saying they have nothing to hide. And while the more distressing allegations of abuse have not been verified by authorities, they nevertheless resulted in an urgent hearing in the Israeli parliament so that lawmakers could hear for themselves the horrific tales of mistreatment from ex-members of the group and others who have had contact with Lev Tahor.

Details of the hearing were recounted in Hebrew-language reports from the Israeli press.

The Knesset’s committee on the rights of the child heard that Helbrans employs strict disciplinary measures to keep his followers in line. Witnesses told of underage children being forced to marry adults, of couples being ordered to divorce, of food deprivation, corporal punishment, makeshift basement detention cells and the administration of psychiatric medications as a means of exerting control.

The community responded on the Lev Tahor website, saying that committee hearing was full of “blood libels.”

Contrary to the allegations, Canadian child-welfare investigators have found “no torture cellars and iron bars, no small shoes, no isolated and ostracized people and no children removed from their homes and no independent psychiatric treatments,” it said.

Two of the families have been ordered to appear in court north of Montreal Wednesday morning in relation to a judge’s order to establish regular visits with Quebec’s child protection authorities. It was this order that precipitated Lev Tahor’s 40 families to flee the province for Ontario on Nov. 18.

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